THE ROLE OF LABOR UNION ON EFFECTIVE INDUSTRIAL RELATIONS: THE CASE OF EQUATORIAL BUSINESS GROUP

Abstract

Labor union are expected to have a great role in safeguarding employees interest and creating effective industrial relation, However in most cases they fail to achieve this and encounter many challenges in their functioning. The main objective of this thesis is to assess the role of labor union in creating effective industrial relation in the case of Equatorial Business Group PLC and provide critical recommendation for improvement. A descriptive research by using both quantitative & qualitative methods were done. 211 employees (member & nonmember of the union) were taken as a sample by using stratified sampling methods and were asked to complete a self-administrated questionnaires with 45 Likert scale questions. A face-to-face interview was conducted with the labor union leader and the organization managers. The internal consistency and reliability of the questions were tested and showed a strong consistency. To analyze quantitative data descriptive statistics such as percentages, frequencies and mean were employed by using SPSS software. Based on the major finding the role of labor union in creating effective industrial relation is found to be weak and basically fails to protect and promote employees’ interests, the collective agreement is not effective in playing its function and the knowledge and attitude of employees and management towards both the labor union and industrial relation is moderately good. The major challenges of the labor union are found to be management influence, lack of strong and skilled union managers as well as manpower and the lack of support from the employees. The research conclude that the union is not playing its role properly and face a considerable amount of challenges and recommended future directions to improve the union and its challenging situations. Therefore, the researcher recommends the responsible bodies to use the findings of the research to further enhance the practice of the union to create effective industrial relation.